Today we decided to take a bike ride to our town center as the weather was perfect. We decided to take the scenic route through the mountain which turned out to be a great idea once we made it to the top, but getting there was quite a challenge. We had a great view into the valley from the top as you can see in the picture above! Once we got to the town center we found that we were not the only people that decided to enjoy the nice weather as the entire town was packed. In the town square each restaurant had seating outside their entrance and there was not a seat to be had.

We enjoyed some time in the Schlosspark (translated castle park). The town does a really great job of keeping up the grounds and planing flowers everywhere. It is still just so surreal that this is our home now. Check out the rest of our pictures on our photobucket page here.

Nathan's 1st Birthday!

It is official. Nathan is 1. Where did the time go?

Planning for this party actually started about 3 weeks ago with a conversation about cake. Here in Germany they don't have bakeries that have birthday cakes like in the US. They also don't have boxed cake mixes either. We all know that I am not a cooking genuis by any means so needless to say I was a little nervous about making a cake from scratch. We were talking about this over dinner one night with our good friends, the Urbanski family. And God love them, they found a Betty Crocker cake mix AND frosting while on a trip to Amsterdam. What would we do without these wonderful, thoughtful people! We cannot thank them enough for their generosity!


After getting the cake mix and reading the directions I realized we needed vegetable oil for the mix. I know what you are thinking, so what is the big deal? Just go buy some! Not so easy my friends!! They don't just have regular vegetable oil here! Noooo, we have sunflower, Raps seed oil, and any other kind of oil you can think of!! It took Sean's office, Drew Urbanksi, and Wikipedia to finally find out what oil we needed. The cake turned out great and we congratualted ourselves on the correct guess in oil. Ahhh the small things! :)


While Sean was at work I was busy making the cake and decorating the house. I decorated the dining room with balloons and gummie bears hanging from the celing. Nathan took one look at the balloons and started a temper tantrum because he wanted to rip them from the celing. Trying to reason with a 1 year old and tell him no, those are for decoration and not play is impossible.


The big moment arrived and Nathan got to dig into the cake. He loved it!! I can't believe he is such a big boy! We are sorry that not everyone could be here to enjoy this wonderful day with us, but we hope the pictures and video help ease some sadness. We love you all and think of you every day.

Here is the link to the new pictures: http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g46/snerb722/Nathans%201st%20Birthday/

Enjoy the video!

Heidelberg and Paris

We have been so busy taking in the sights around Europe the past two weeks! We are so lucky to have this opportunity so we are definitely taking advantage of it!

Last weekend we visited a town in Germany named Heidelberg. It was only a 20 minute trip from our house, but it is a beautiful town with an amazing castle. We spent the day walking down a street filled with cafes and shops. It was a warm Saturday so there were a lot of people!
The main reason we wanted to visit Heidelberg was to see the awesome castle. We didn't quite know where we were going so we took the long way up the mountain but it was well worth it because the view was amazing. However, the hike was pretty much straight up. Which isn't bad but we were literally pushing Nate's stroller with our arms straight up. Once we saw the castle though we realized it was well worth it! The castle was originally built in 1214AD but throughout the years and wars it has undergone many rebuilds and damage. You can check out more history of the castle by clicking here.

After we visited the castle we had lunch at a street cafe where we could relax and Nate could people watch. A group of saxophone street performers provided some awesome background music. After we got done eating Nate and I went to dance to the music. He was so cute! There were some tourists that actually took his picture while he was dancing! He is a total ladies man!

You can see all of our pictures from our trip to Heidelberg here on our photobucket page.

After lunch we went to the Body Worlds exhibit. Sean was lucky enough to see this exhibit when he studied abroad in Italy while in college. It was, well, an interesting experience. Body Worlds is an exhibit where the "artist" uses donated bodies and plasticates them (turns the body into plastic). Then the bodies are put into different poses or the skin is removed so you can see the skeletal structure. I won't go into much more detail but if you want to know more you can go to the website bodyworlds.com.

One of the great things about Germany is that they have a lot of national holidays. Sean had Good Friday and the day after Easter off. Because we had a four day weekend we decided to take a trip to Paris! I can't even begin to describe how amazing it feels to just say...hmm.. I think we'll go to Paris for the weekend! The night before we left we realized our navigation system only had maps for Germany and our Garmin didn't have maps for Europe either. So, I wrote all the directions by hand and on a wing and prayer, we left the next morning for a 5 hour trip to Paris.

There are no words to describe how scary and unorganized Paris traffic is! There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the layout of the road nor are there any traffic lines to tell you what lane you are in! Motorcycles zoom in and out of traffic and in between cars and I can't believe we didn't hit any of them! We were doing pretty good on directions until we came to a round-about we later named "The Circle of Death" because it is just like herding cattle. We were supposed to take the 4th exit once we were on the Circle of Death, but there was no way to tell which exit was which! We had to get on the Circle of Death four times before we found the right exit!! We somehow managed to find our hotel through it all, but of course, there was no where to park! Sean dropped Nate and I off at the hotel and went on a search to find a parking spot. He finally found one but it was a parking spot where you had to pay. And just our luck, we couldn't use our credit card to pay! So we just left and hoped we didn't get a ticket. We didn't :-)

We walked all over Paris! We went to the Louvre, the Arc de Triumph, Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame. Everything was beautiful. Pictures don't do justice to the amazing history and art that are everywhere in Paris. We tried to do our best with our pictures. We took 160 pictures in Paris alone! Nate was amzing during our trip. He wanted out of the car after four hours but other than that, he did very well. It is too bad that he will not remember any of this experience in Paris. How lucky is he!?

Here is the link to our pictures. On the left hand side under Albums if you click on back to snerb722 you can also look at the pictures from Heidelberg. I didn't put any captions on the pictures yet. I will when I can, there are just sooo many! Enjoy!!

http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g46/snerb722/Paris/

Grass feels funny

Spring has finally arrived! After a month of rain and cold weather, the sun does exist in Germany! Nathan and I decided to go outside and play in our backyard. He really hasn't played outside since he learned how to walk so this was a new experience for him. When he fell he didn't quite like the feel of the grass on his hands. I laughed so hard I cried! Luckily he has gotten over his phobia of grass and LOVES to play outside! He likes to pull the grass and bring you little pieces of it to put in your hands. We spend most of our day playing outside. Enjoy the video!

Our Debit Card Adventures and Big Boy Nate!

Before I begin I just wanted to say hello to my Grandma! Welcome to the Internet! I am so happy you are able to read about our adventures and see pictures of Nathan.

This week we started trying to teach Nathan how to eat like a big boy. We have been giving him food on a plate and slowly teaching him not to throw the plate on the floor or food off the plate. So far we are doing okay. We are also trying to teach him how to feed himself with a fork and spoon. The fork and spoon end up being toys. It is much faster to eat with our fingers!! He loves mixed veggies. but for some reason will only eat green beans if they are by themselves and not part of the vegggie mix. If he gets a green bean, he takes it out of him mouth with a yucky face and throws it on the floor! Tonight we had meatloaf for dinner and he LOVED it!! He also loves any kind of fruit. Of course...just like mommy! His favorite is fresh apples.

I had an interesting birthday last Saturday. Thanks again for all the birthday wishes! We still need some things for our house so we thought we would go to IKEA, have some lunch and do some shopping. We finally have our ATM cards, or EC Cards like they say here in Germany. We have our PIN numbers but Nathan got ahold of the mail and ripped the pins from the card number it belonged to so we had no idea which PIN went with each card. We go to the cafeteria at IKEA and try to pay with our cards. Both PIN numbers are denied. Sean then tries to go to the ATM at IKEA and comes back looking like he was going to hit something or somebody. The ATM machine ate his card!! We scrape together some change and pay for our food and decide that after we eat, we will go to our bank (20 mins away) and use my card to withdrawal some money. So we go to our bank, I put my card in....THE ATM EATS MY CARD TOO!!! Now we have no way of getting money and no cash on hand. We give up and go home. It turns out that our cards were locked due to a mail mix up and now we won't get them back until someone cleans out the ATMs and mail them to us. Who knows when that will be.

After this experience I have decided that our motto so far in Germany is: The only way to learn something is to do it wrong the first time. Eventually we will get the hang of things.

Have a wonderful day!